NOTES AND QUERIES. 317 



colony in the gables of the Eectory Farm could be cleared out. In the 

 early spring the Starlings will sometimes enlarge the entrance-hole of 

 a box so as to gain admission, and they have done this to three boxes 

 which were new only last year. We have had tbree Robins' nests in 

 old kettles, but only one hatched off; the eggs of the second were 

 destroyed by mice or rats ; and the tbird, which was deserted after the 

 third egg had been laid, is now, with the kettle, in the Ipswich 

 Museum. Some marauder also robbed a Pied Wagtail's nest with 

 four eggs in an old saucepan. The Creeper has never built in our 

 boxes, but will nearly always use a place made for it by nailing a piece 

 of wood or bark to a tree. For this purpose the birch is very well 

 adapted by the hollows often seen in its stem, and I have known of two 

 Creepers' nests containing eggs in one birch-tree at the same time. — 

 Julian G. Tuck (Tostock Eectory, Bury St. Edmunds). 



INSECTA. 



A re-discovered British Beetle (Lomechusa strumosa). — In Ste- 

 phens's 'Mandibulata,' vol. v. (1832), p. 108, the following record occurs 

 of the capture of tbis insect : — " Very rare : I have hitherto seen two 

 specimens (which are in the British Museum) only ; one of which, I 

 was informed by Dr. Leach, was taken by Sir H. Sloane on Hampstead- 

 heath, in 1710 ; the otber was captured by himself while travelling on 

 the mail-coach between Cheltenham and Gloucester, about twenty 

 years since." These are the only two British specimens tbat have 

 been captured till tbis year, when the writer took a specimen with 

 Formica sanguinea at Woking on May 25th, and six more on May 29th. 

 This just shows how an insect may be found again after a lapse of 

 many years, when it has been left out of our books and lists ; and the 

 sceptical coleopterist is ready to assert that it never was British, and 

 never should have been included in our insect fauna. It calls to mind 

 Dibolia cynoglossi, taken by us at Pevensey a few years ago sparingly, 

 and in plenty last year ; and many other cases could be mentioned. 

 However — revenons a nos moutons — the life-history of Lomechusa is of 

 extreme interest. It is a myrmecophilous insect, and only lives with 

 its host — the big red slave-making ant, Formica sanguinea. It is 

 a true guest, and has aborted palpi, and a broad short tongue, which 

 enables the ants the better to feed it. It is licked by its hosts, as it 

 produces a sweet secretion, of which they are very fond, and is covered 

 with patches of golden hairs where the secretion exudes from. The 

 larva also, which is a fleshy white grub, is fed and carefully tended by 

 the ants ; when full-grown it is very like an ant-grub, and, although 



